Here's a question about E85......................

[99 R/T 10]

Here\'s a question about E85......................

If it comes down to it, can our cars be retrofitted to use Ethanol? I understand that E85 is 85% Ethanol and 15% gas, but never hear about octane ratings for this fuel. Is it rated the same as normal gas is in regards to the "octane"?

 

[PSilverGTS]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Here is a recent article about biofuels.

Popular Mechanics Biofuels Article

 

[PSilverGTS]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Here a site to make your on ethanol fuel for your car. Also, it appears that you can convert any car to ethanol and I saw a kit on their site for about $500.

Make your own ethanol fuel

 

[joshwars]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

I believe E85 is more corrosive than normal gasoline and everything including the rubber components of the fuel system has to be retrofitted. I dont think it is a simple task or something that can be done with a $500 kit.

 

[Viper TT/10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

call jr at svs. they have been tuning with e-85.

my car will run mostly on e-85 very soon.

 

[Chuck 98 RT/10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

I love the thought of running my vehicles on anything that the middle east can't supply.

 

[GTS Bruce]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

E85 will yield around 30% LESS miles oer gallon and cost more.Petro is not high enough in price to justify bothering with E85. GTS Bruce

 

[STOUT 1]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

E85 is 100 octane here in Minnesota. Currently have a E85 compliant vehicle with approximately 30,000 on the meter. NO difference in mileage between E85 and Petro with this vehicle.

 

[Chuck 98 RT/10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

E85 will yield around 30% LESS miles oer gallon and cost more.Petro is not high enough in price to justify bothering with E85. GTS Bruce

I've heard E85 cost less but the savings is offset by the reduced MPG. Regardless, if it ever becomes viable I'll make the switch. I'm done with the ragheads.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. The gasoline portion is needed for starting and driveability- the boiling point of ethanol (and the extra heat energy needed to evaporate it) will cause very poor starting and cold engine performance. Running on 100% ethanol is not a practical option for all-weather use. Ethanol needs ~2.5X the heat energy that gasoline needs to evaporate. (Which is why ethanol on your skin feels cold.)

Because ethanol is 35% oxygen, you will experience an equivalent loss in volumetric fuel economy. As long as an engine has to run on both gasoline and ethanol, manufacturers can't optimize for ethanol use. In my opinion an E85 capable vehicle is therefore technically "stupid" since it isn't built for a higher compression ratio, optimized fuel nozzle holes/spray, power, or fuel economy. It's a wasteful advertisement for corn growers.

Ethanol has a blending octane of roughly 125. That is, it acts like a fuel of 125 octane when blended into gasoline. The spread between RON and MON is much larger than gasoline.

Ethanol is a single boiling point fuel. Below 172F it is liquid; above that it will vaporize. That causes vapor lock concerns. Gasoline by example begins to boil at 90F and some portions of it won't boil until over 400F. (So be careful of opening that ethanol "gas" cap on a hot day.)

Car companies can make engines that are E85 capable, and they often do without telling you. GM's yellow cars are telling you now, but all the OEMs have made E85 cars for years because it was a way to fool the CAFE game. The CAFE number for an E85 engine was calculated based only on the gasoline it consumed, not the ethanol. So if it runs on E85, it's only using 15% gasoline and the result can look pretty good...

Speaking of corn growers, ethanol is not a viable in-country renewable fuel supply until the process can accept alternate feedstocks besides corn. Using the rest of the stalk, skin, roots, etc makes more sense but is not yet fully developed. Until it is, ethanol will cost as much or more than the equivalent volume of gasoline. There's a bad surprise.

Ethanol loves water. (Scotch and water...) It will not separate like gasoline, so a mix of ethanol will have to be drained or burned. GAsoline will only absorb tenths of a percent and separate (hence frozen gas lines.) Pick your evil.

Because of the water tolerance issue, ethanol is transported separately to blending terminals. It is not allowed in pipeline systems. Ethanol is only splash blended in the tank truck as it leaves for the gas station. Therefore distribution costs for ethanol will be significantly higher, and don't expect the pipelines to change their mind. They will not tolerate water-loving fluids in the same line that carries jet fuel. Would you?

Ethanol will have it's place, but it won't save you much, if any, money in the short term, will lead to a new type of engine to take most advantage of it, and until there is further progress in the production capability, not provide a significant source of alternate fuel.

 

[Chuck 98 RT/10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Good info Tom. Is it true what they say about Brazil? That they are nearly 100% E85?

 

[Go Fast For Life]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Hey, I'm thinking about burning recycled french frier oil through mine!!!

 

[Russ M]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

You can run a viper on e85 if you do the following mods

1)Bigger fuel pump
2)change all rubber lines out for e85 friendly lines
3)Bigger injectors
4)programable ecu of some sort

And you would need to tune the car.

You would have the benefit of 100 octane fuel which means more boost if you have forced induction and or more timing if the car likes it.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Chuck, to relieve themselves from oil dependence, Brazil used their abundance of sugar cane to produce fuel grade ethanol and so a government required percentage of cars sold there run on 100% ethanol. Those cars can only run on ethanol, cannot run on gasoline. I don't think the car population is 100% ethanol burning, though.

Russ, add larger fuel lines, compatible fuel tank material, a huge fuel filter (the water that is attracted to ethanol will cause rust not just in your car, but everything it touches on the way to your car) and be prepared to use aftermarket fuel additives more frequently. Ethanol increases the formation of intake valve deposits tremendously!!

And for the record, it is totally illegal for you to do this. You would obviously be changing parts that need to be emissions-certified, you won't pass OBD-II state inspections, and without some hardware changes (like different piston/combustion chamber designs) you'll be running richer exhaust. Perhaps someone will develop "kits" like they have to convert to natural gas that are CARB certified, but I think the tuning hurdles are higher, making it less likely.

 

[Chuck 98 RT/10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Tom, don't you think those issues would be well on their way to being resolved by the end of the month if all the oil dried up today? You're the expert but to me they don't seem to be that difficult. Economics seems to be the biggest issue IMO. Just discussing, not arguing.

 

[2001 GTS]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

I put in a few gallons when I goto the track, approx. 1:4 mix.

Nice and smooth on the spray

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Chuck, it'll take a few years to regain balance. There is new legislation that requires a certain percentage of renewable fuels in the future, so that will get the supply side going. The issue is economic; making ethanol from corn is easy, making ethanol from tree bark is not. Making ethanol at all is still new; there aren't enough producing plants to make what the new laws require. As demand for ethanol increases, technology will find more ways to make it. Meanwhile, because demand is dictated by law, expect to pay more.

The bigger "problems" are 1) backward compatibility and 2) distribution. The general public will not want to retrofit parts on older cars to make them run on higher than the current 10% ethanol, much less 85% ethanol. The distribution system is inefficient; there are many small ethanol producers, shipping ethanol via truck and splash blending for the gas station. The 90% portion that is gasoline that gets mixed with ethanol is also special; it's not simply regular gasoline, so there is yet another product. It's maybe a little hard to fathom, but the gasoline supply system is streamlined for only a handful of products and adding one or two more is a huge undertaking.

And the last part is that oil is not an on-off switch. There's lots and lots of crude oil, just that it's in more expensive places to harvest it. There was recently a TV news article about the tar sands in Canada - more oil than the Saudis but mixed with sand and hard (expensive) to separate. Some clever Canadians ought to try to figure that out, I'd rather pay for that and drink the ethanol...

 

[99 R/T 10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

This is an iteresting read Ethanol fuel efficient story.

 

[Viper TT/10]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

if you have the right fuel system, upgraded ignition and the right engine management system i see e85 as being a good alternative for race gas. thats one of the reasons i added the motec and custom svs direct coil ignition system.

plus you can go to a lot of gas stations to fill up instead of having barrels of race gas at home.

not only would you save money(race gas seems to be getting more expensive everyday) but you could make alot more power on less boost if you have forced induction.

 

[GTSnake]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

I put in a few gallons when I goto the track, approx. 1:4 mix.

Nice and smooth on the spray

That sounds interesting. If you mix it down to lower proportions would it reduce the negative effects of ethanol?

 

[Rizzo]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Chuck, it'll take a few years to regain balance. There is new legislation that requires a certain percentage of renewable fuels in the future, so that will get the supply side going. The issue is economic; making ethanol from corn is easy, making ethanol from tree bark is not. Making ethanol at all is still new; there aren't enough producing plants to make what the new laws require. As demand for ethanol increases, technology will find more ways to make it. Meanwhile, because demand is dictated by law, expect to pay more.

The bigger "problems" are 1) backward compatibility and 2) distribution. The general public will not want to retrofit parts on older cars to make them run on higher than the current 10% ethanol, much less 85% ethanol. The distribution system is inefficient; there are many small ethanol producers, shipping ethanol via truck and splash blending for the gas station. The 90% portion that is gasoline that gets mixed with ethanol is also special; it's not simply regular gasoline, so there is yet another product. It's maybe a little hard to fathom, but the gasoline supply system is streamlined for only a handful of products and adding one or two more is a huge undertaking.

And the last part is that oil is not an on-off switch. There's lots and lots of crude oil, just that it's in more expensive places to harvest it. There was recently a TV news article about the tar sands in Canada - more oil than the Saudis but mixed with sand and hard (expensive) to separate. Some clever Canadians ought to try to figure that out, I'd rather pay for that and drink the ethanol...

Oh we've figured it out all right. North Alberta is BOOMING right now with oil exploration in the oil sands. They have huge refineries running already and more being built as we speak. It's a big business right now and with the price of oil being so high it's viable to extract the oil. If the price of a barrel dropped in 1/2 you would see the oil sands production drop drastically because of the cost to get it out. There has to be a certain price to make it worth while....and you wonder why the price of oil is through the roof. These oil companies are bending us over BIG time right now. Their profits are at all time record highs yet they keep increasing the price of fuel. My guess is they know that its going to be mandated that altenative fuels are coming and hence the need for oil is going to go down year after year. Lets face it. It's only a matter of time before the oil dries up. It cant last forever. Probably not in our life time but some day they will have to find ways of heating our homes, fueling our cars etc without oil or gas. Geothermal heating is already getting used more and more here as they can now drill down and install pipes. I have a few friends that have this and it is amazing. They use the heat from the ground to heat their homes, heat their water tanks and then it reverses in the winter and cools the house in hte summer. Combine that with solar power to run the pumps and you can heat and cool a house for free basically for the life of the house. It's wild and its getting more and more popular.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

You're touching on the big oil companies' problem - predicting the future. Those refineries now take a few years to get the environmental permits just to start building, then a few more years to build one. (I don't think a new-from-scratch refinery has been built in the US for 15 years; they have closed small ones and added equipment to larger ones.) With that lead time and the hundreds of millions to build one, it is quite a bet to know when or if to do so. Not defending them, just revealing some of the issues.

Alternative fuels are a loooooong way off. Ethanol is talked about, but it's only 10% of a gallon (and only in some areas,) and E85 is in a handful of stations (despite the publicity.) The IRL is switching from methanol to ethanol, but that's a publicity event. "Bio-diesel" can be as little as 10-15% "bio" and the rest is still original "diesel." French fry drivers are the handful making news, but you can't buy it to use it. Oddly, all these alternatives cost more than gasoline! Ethanol itself is around $3.50/gallon, so don't pray too hard for E85.

There are some pretty unexciting things that would help as much or more than what's going on now. The volume of lubricants sold in the US is about a billion gallons/year, roughly the amount of gasoline a major brand in the US sells. Only 20% of the DIY oil is returned, so, ummm... where did the rest go? Even if returned oil is merely burned, it means there's one oil company worth of fresh fuel that didn't have to be produced. (I'm slopping a lot of statistics together, so don't take the numbers as accurate.)

 

[Camfab]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

I think E-85 is the way to go for high performance applications like the Viper. I would have no problem making the necessary changes. Relatively speaking it's super cheap compared to racegas. Correct me if i'm wrong Tom, but shouldn't E-85 run much cleaner than gasoline? Considering guys here spend $3,500 for a set of nice step headers, the cost of conversion to E-85 seems like chump change. As stated before, you could run 12.5:1 compression or a supercharger with lots of boost.

The funny thing is that in the state of Kalifornia where "eco" is the way of life, supposedly. There isn't a single public E-85 station, go figure. I checked, I wanted to buy a flex fuel truck. Think about this, if Vipers were made flex fuel, imagine the possibilities......see where I'm going. GM flex fuel cars are similarly priced to their gasoline siblings.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Camfab, there are two hurdles. E85 will have very poor starting and driveability because the latent heat of vaporization of alcohols is high. (think how it cools your skin at the doctors...) Starting an E85 engine in the cold will be difficult, and that's already why there is 15% gasoline - to give it the lighter components.

The other hurdle is flex-fuel designs. You can't change the compression ratio via electronics, hard to have optimal spray patterns when one fuel takes nearly 2X the volume as the other, etc. A dedicated design will indeed take advantage of E85, but flex fuel design can't.

The only one taking advantage is the car company. They get a CAFE rating of an engine based only on the amount of gasoline consumed, i.e. the 15%. Therefore millions of flex fuel engines have already been sold to the public over the last few years, but without the fanfare. Dodge did lots of minivans, GM did lots of small pickups. Surprise!

 

[Camfab]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Tom you are correct, the flex design is a bad comprimise because it can't optimze the engine for alcohol in a normally aspirated engine. My question from an OEM standpoint is, why not turbocharge the engine and have the boost set according to the varying ratios of alcohol. More alcohol, more boost, hopefully more efficiency from a fuel with less energy. This would go around that fact that you can't otherwise mechanically change compression ratios with conventional engines.

As far as the E-85 hype, I believe that's GM desperate marketing department trying to convince people that while Toyota and Honda have been selling Hybrids. GM has been secretly developing this great alternative that's going to save us from fuel problems as well as the great American farmer, and the environment in one shot.

 

[Tom F&L GoR]

Re: Here\'s a question about E85......................

Camfab, you are smarter than the average bear. I suspect the reasons are that the combination of the following doesn't result in a large quantity:

1) E85 availability
2) high performance engine need (OEM perspective)
3) improvement in low boost emissions (emissions and CAFE are at low load conditions, so designing for this low load all the way up to E85 full load is a wide spread.)
4) efficiency of a turbo (or supercharger) at both conditions (i.e. at 10% ethanol and at 85% ethanol the boost levels could be very different.

Nothing that couldn't be handled, although I would expect it in a 4-cylinder sport compact first to play up the pseudo hybrid, fuel economy, ethanol, marketing [******] first.